They weep. I see, see, see. They form
a circle, wrapped in the ceaseless booming.
They still wait, and they must wait.
The dead sons cling about the father
unavenged. Sits in a tomb,
I see, I see in midst of them, my mother.
Sunt lacrymae rerum. Pascoli returns to his father’s death more than once in these early poems: never with impotent cries against man or destiny, but with a sense as it were of wide-eyed wonder at the pity of the thing. Here are a few verses characteristic of his attitude; characteristic, too, of his daring simplicity of expression, relieved, just as there is a fear of its sinking into mere prose, by some equally daring conception that throws a vivid light over all that has gone before.
August 10th.
St. Laurence’ day. I know’t, because so many
stars through the quiet air
burn, fall; because so great a weeping
gleams in the concave sky.
A swallow was returning to her roof;
they killed her; ’mid the thorns she fell
She had an insect in her beak:
the supper for her nestlings.
Now she lies there as on a cross, and holds
that worm out to that far-off sky;
and in the shadow waits for her her nest;
its chirping fainter comes and fainter.
A man, too, was returning to his nest.
They killed him; he spoke: Pardon!
And in his open eyes remained a cry.
He bore two dolls as gifts....
There in the lonely cottage, now,
in vain they wait and wait for him:
He motionless, astonished, shows
the dolls to the far-off sky.